29.08.2007: you could call yonge & dundas the commercial heart of the city. there is no free space, every meter of every facade is plastered in ever-rotating and glittery adverts, streching up all the way into the sky. there is no night. through all hours the glowing billboards and six tv screens bathe dundas square in flickering light, switching from white to orange as the adverts flip around. the traffic never stops and it never quietens down. directly above you can see only a single star. every tuesday for the last two months they've been screening science fiction films here (an extra screen couldn't hurt), and what better place to watch fritz lang's metropolis? would you believe i've never seen it before? it's true. i've been saving it for a special occasion, such as now, watching it bang in the middle of canada's largest and 'worst' city (depending on your metrics). tonight it's also trip hop metropolis, which could have gone either way, but didn't. the genre didn't particularly fit the film, nor did the music particularly match the pictures, but neither did it ruin it. but forget the trip hop, metropolis needs to be taken to the stage with an industrial glitch soundtrack and hanin elias as maria and alec empire as fredersen. best show never made. brigitte helm, who plays a silly number of roles (death and the seven deadly sins?) but most significantly the machine-human run amok (also the machine-human not run amok - less cool), is clearly the best thing about the film. she's what they would have called sensational. fantastic eyebrows. as for the politics and the message i'm not so sure. it didn't end on the revolution that i'd be waiting for, and i'll leave it at that. on monday we (as in toronto) had the pleasure of having julie back for the night. just one. her plan was to take her exchange group to the biryani house (their request) and then to the future cafe. we made it to the indian (mostly), but after dinner they were all too tired to go the pub. super lame. you're in the big city and you don't want to party? and only half of them had even made it to dinner, the others (all of the guys minus one) felt compelled to visit the cn tower. funny that, how the guys were all drawn to the city's giant phallus. or the girls were all scared away. whichever way you want to look at it. anyway.. today is la tomatina, my favourite fiesta that i've never been to. one of these years i'll be there, for sure. 28.08.2007: i used to like penn and teller. i thought they were cool. used to. i was reading the comments on my favourite flash-game blog. a couple of people had complained about a link the author had made to something PETA related. i'm not sure what the link actually was because, after two comments pointing to petakillsanimals.com and a shitty documentary by penn and teller on youtube, the link was removed. this is how your front groups and corporate think tanks work. it's how climate change becomes a debate. how fast food is killing your children. how smoking doesn't necessarily kill. you know the ones, you've seen the websites, most of them are run by the centre for consumer freedom (CCF), a non-profit organisation who is in turn run by PR agency breman & co. the CCF say they exist because: the growing cabal of "food cops," health care enforcers, militant activists, meddling bureaucrats, and violent radicals who think they know "what's best for you" are pushing against our basic freedoms. we're here to push back.
29.08.2007: you could call yonge & dundas the commercial heart of the city. there is no free space, every meter of every facade is plastered in ever-rotating and glittery adverts, streching up all the way into the sky. there is no night. through all hours the glowing billboards and six tv screens bathe dundas square in flickering light, switching from white to orange as the adverts flip around. the traffic never stops and it never quietens down. directly above you can see only a single star. every tuesday for the last two months they've been screening science fiction films here (an extra screen couldn't hurt), and what better place to watch fritz lang's metropolis? would you believe i've never seen it before? it's true. i've been saving it for a special occasion, such as now, watching it bang in the middle of canada's largest and 'worst' city (depending on your metrics). tonight it's also trip hop metropolis, which could have gone either way, but didn't. the genre didn't particularly fit the film, nor did the music particularly match the pictures, but neither did it ruin it. but forget the trip hop, metropolis needs to be taken to the stage with an industrial glitch soundtrack and hanin elias as maria and alec empire as fredersen. best show never made. brigitte helm, who plays a silly number of roles (death and the seven deadly sins?) but most significantly the machine-human run amok (also the machine-human not run amok - less cool), is clearly the best thing about the film. she's what they would have called sensational. fantastic eyebrows. as for the politics and the message i'm not so sure. it didn't end on the revolution that i'd be waiting for, and i'll leave it at that. on monday we (as in toronto) had the pleasure of having julie back for the night. just one. her plan was to take her exchange group to the biryani house (their request) and then to the future cafe. we made it to the indian (mostly), but after dinner they were all too tired to go the pub. super lame. you're in the big city and you don't want to party? and only half of them had even made it to dinner, the others (all of the guys minus one) felt compelled to visit the cn tower. funny that, how the guys were all drawn to the city's giant phallus. or the girls were all scared away. whichever way you want to look at it. anyway.. today is la tomatina, my favourite fiesta that i've never been to. one of these years i'll be there, for sure.
28.08.2007: i used to like penn and teller. i thought they were cool. used to. i was reading the comments on my favourite flash-game blog. a couple of people had complained about a link the author had made to something PETA related. i'm not sure what the link actually was because, after two comments pointing to petakillsanimals.com and a shitty documentary by penn and teller on youtube, the link was removed. this is how your front groups and corporate think tanks work. it's how climate change becomes a debate. how fast food is killing your children. how smoking doesn't necessarily kill. you know the ones, you've seen the websites, most of them are run by the centre for consumer freedom (CCF), a non-profit organisation who is in turn run by PR agency breman & co. the CCF say they exist because:
the growing cabal of "food cops," health care enforcers, militant activists, meddling bureaucrats, and violent radicals who think they know "what's best for you" are pushing against our basic freedoms. we're here to push back.